journal 02: clutter
burn out from life
i haven’t sat at my desk for two weeks now. piles of laundry thrown on my chair. old mail, books, and receipts covering the surface of the table. dust sticking everywhere. i have been avoiding opening the substack app. this could be either a loud cry for help or i am purely indolent.
traffic in los angeles. 40 minute drive to work, 40 minutes home. i have been sitting in silence during these dreadful car rides. my exhaustion is at a point where music is too loud; even a self-help podcast is doing the opposite of what it should do. my sighs are becoming repetitive as i stare at the red lights ahead. is this what life is now? to the point where i have no words to say but an occasional sigh?
i yearn for silence. i yearn to be alone without a pin drop from the world, though it’s difficult to attain as you get older. days at work feel longer — by the time i clock out, the sun has already begun to set. by the time i arrive home, the moon has become the main character of the sky. nights feel shorter. another day to sleep just to repeat the cycle. it never ends, does it?
the clutter continued to build. i began breaking all my streaks; meditation, reading, writing and exercise streaks. these past 2 weeks i have fallen apart. and i watched it happen. i let it crumble right in front of me. but did i bother to put a stop to it? no. because i hit a wall. i needed to take a step back, to reflect on my life from a different angle.
you may be wondering what i have been doing. i changed my routine for once — i stopped being so uptight with how i use my time. i played video games to decompress after work. i took a 4pm nap on my day off. i went to a spontaneous concert with my friend from high school. i put aside chores for a whole day. i did everything opposite from what i tell myself i need to do. i listened to my heart instead of pushing it aside.
i imagine myself like a starfish. i get wounded from time to time, but i grow back. i treat my burn outs like a dramatic injury that needs time to regenerate. the healing process is necessary — finding yourself to experience being indolent. and you must come to realize that sometimes, that is okay. you can eventually jump back to your usual self and routine, but time is needed to regain that power.
so at times, you must let the clutter build. you must sit in silence and watch it pile in front of you. absorb the mess and uncertainty. flaunt the uncomfortable. and most importantly, seek serenity in a way only you know best. if that may be a car ride in silence, or hours of melting in bed playing animal crossing.
you will have tomorrow to grow your limbs back.
Love always, lilia
Last night I wept in a way I haven’t wept for some time. I wept until I aged myself. I watched it happen in the mirror. I watched the lines arrive around my eyes like engraved sunbursts; it was like watching flowers open in time-lapse on a windowsill. The tears not only aged my face, they also changed its texture, turned the skin of my cheeks into putty. I recognized this as a rite of decadence, but I did not know how to stop it.
Blue-eye, archaic: “A blueness or dark circle around the eye, from weeping or other cause.”
Eventually I confess to a friend some details about my weeping—its intensity, its frequency. She says (kindly) that she thinks we sometimes weep in front of a mirror not to inflame self-pity, but because we want to feel witnessed in our despair. (Can a reflection be a witness? Can one pass oneself the sponge wet with vinegar from a reed?)
Maggie Nelson, Bluets
